Hair: 50 years on, there is still hope
22 Jan 2019

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Scott Gorman

Hair may be 50 years old but it isn't in any way feeling its age. As a youthful and exuberant cast dance onto the stage in a swirl of colour and energy, the audience is transported to a time of hope and sensual innocence. For some it is a memory, for some nostalgia for a time that now seems long gone. For all it is a painful reminder of how far we haven't come.

This version of Hair is staged as a cabaret performance by the "tribe." They are always aware of the audience, play to the audience, and even interact. Our genial host Berger - Andrew Perry (West Side Story, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, American Idiot) - takes over from Georgia Fox who has invited the audience in with a mystically spiritual take on "Aquarius." Berger has rapid patter that lays out the themes: anti-war, pro-drug, free love and racial equality. He is completely charming and the asides to his mother are a hilarious comic illustration of the generation gap that Hair is determined to exploit and explode.

Then David Andrew Reid, who has already claimed the spotlight with his vividly sexual physicality and bared chest stealing focus, launches into "Colored Spade." Fifty years later, hearing the lyrics "I'm a colored spade/A nigga/A black nigga/A jungle bunny/Jigaboo coon/Pickaninny mau mau/Uncle Tom/Aunt Jemima/Little Black Sambo" spit out with vehemence still shocks. And so many years after they were written, still sadly relevant. We really haven't come very far and, with the explicit race-baiting happening just to the south and, with less and less subtlety in our own backyard, perhaps it is even worse.

It is a point that this Hair makes repeatedly and effectively. We are still at war with far-off others, sacrificing our youth for dubious reasons. The recent legalization of marijuana mutes the pro-drug message, playing it more for laughs than indignation. But it is the state of relations between the sexes that is the most troubling. The four main characters are all male, the main female roles are subservient, most bluntly during "Black Boys," "White Boys," and "Frank Mills." Even the ballad "Easy to be Hard" where Sheila, Marisa Dashney, finally stands up for herself in a maudlin way, ends with her following Berger, who has just been an absolute shit, offstage with all forgiven.

This aspect isn't so glaring in other productions because, paradoxically, all the really big numbers are sung by women, giving them a chance to claim their power vocally. Alas this production is vocally weak. When the ensemble chimes in the sound is rich and spine tingling, the solo voices are unable to achieve that. The sound is mixed to the high end but time and time again a minor modulation is hammered vocally and thinly with odd phrasing. The choreography, also by director Julie Tomaino, is precise while appearing loose, and spectacularly involving. But when it stops to sell a number that should have stopped the show, the energy drains and the voices are left, to their detriment, exposed.

There are exceptions, Sophie Berkowitz sells a wistful "Frank Mills" that is devastating in context, and Kevin James Doe (Peter and the Starcatcher, Anything Goes) melds several hysterically funny caricature roles with serious vocal chops though, for some reason (vocal arrangements?), some of the modulations elude him as well. Doe also charms as a dotty tourist who coos, "You little pop tarts are terrific," before a pivotal speech wishing that every parent would tell their kids to "Be free, be whatever you want to be." Delicious irony that a drag character gives that advice apparently only to the men. 

The multitude of pop hooks in the score do their trick, we can all singalong with the majority of the numbers. But there is a hole at the centre of the main plotline with Christian Hodge as Claude unable to compete with the more flamboyant members of the tribe. That makes his fate less compelling than it should be. However it is extremely difficult to hold the spotlight for the big first act closing number "Where Do I Go?", when the cast is arranged in tasteful nudity just behind. And when the surging choral singing is so thick and sensual, overwhelming instead of embracing with support.

It is a minor concern that Will Mackenzie's Woof's sexual dilemma is glossed over, 1968 was probably just too early for a sexuality anthem as powerful as "Colored Spade." Too bad, from the sonic evidence on stage, Mackenzie would have knocked it out of the theatre. But all is forgiven when Fox and Perry lead the ensemble into an energetic "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)." And in another swirling explosion of colour and energy (and how do they have energy left? This production never flags for a second) the tribe dances offstage. And the audience sings and claps along, 50 years on, despite the evidence, there is still hope.